Lichtenberg Quotes & Sayings

How did mankind ever come by the idea of liberty? What a grand thought it was! — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Pain warns us not to exert our limbs to the point of breaking them. How much knowledge would we not need to recognize this by the exercise of mere reason. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

I forget most of what I read, just as I do most of what I have eaten, but I know that both contribute no less to the conservation of my mind and my body on that account. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

The girl who reveals herself heart and soul to her friend reveals the secrets of the entire sex; for every girl is the guardian of the feminine mysteries. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Most subjects at universities are taught for no other purpose than that they may be re-taught when the students become teachers. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Where the frontier of science once was is now the centre. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

I would give something to know for precisely whom the deeds were really done, of which it is publicly stated they were done 'for the Fatherland'. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The grave is still the best shelter against the storms of destiny. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears ... as easily as we open and shut our eyes. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

What we are able to judge with feeling is very little; the rest is all prejudice and complaisance. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Body and soul: a horse harnessed beside an ox. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

The course of the seasons is a piece of clockwork, with a cuckoo to call when it is spring. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Cultivate that kind of knowledge which enables us to discover for ourselves in case of need that which others have to read or be told of. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

It is astonishing how much the word infinitely is misused: everything is infinitely more beautiful, infinitely better, etc. The concept must have something pleasing about it, or its misuse could not have become so general. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

We judge nothing so hastily as character, and yet there is nothing over which we should be more cautious ... I have always found that the so-called bad people improve on closer acquaintance, while the good fall off. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of their beauty. They give me no pleasure. They are merely auxiliaries. At close range it is all not true. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war? — Georg C. Lichtenberg

A writer who wishes to be read by posterity must not be averse to putting hints which might give rise to whole books, or ideas for learned discussions, in some corner of a chapter so that one should think he can afford to throw them away by the thousand. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Do not take too artificial a view of mankind but judge them from a natural standpoint, deeming them neither over good nor over bad. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

There can hardly be a stranger commodity in the world than books. Printed by people who don't understand them; sold by people who don't understand them; bound, criticized and read by people who don't understand them; and now even written by people who don't understand them. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

And so I recognized that my sojourn into open-heart territory was ultimately an open heart journey in another sense, a spiritual journey of awakening - to the reality that I am here in this life with a purpose, and have been from the day I was born. — Maggie Lichtenberg

Whenever he composes a critical review, I have been told, he gets an enormous erection. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

You can make a good living from soothsaying but not from truthsaying — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

God creates the animals, man creates himself. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Deliberate virtue is never worth much: The virtue of feeling or habit is the thing. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Those who have racked their brains to discover new proofs have perhaps been induced to do so by a compulsion they could not quite explain to themselves. Instead of giving us their new proofs they should have explained to us the motivation that constrained them to search for them. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

How few friends would remain friends if each could see the sentiments of the other in their entirety. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Nothing is more inimical to the progress of science than the belief that we know what we do not yet know. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

If we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Libraries can in general be too narrow or too wide for the soul. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The feeling of health can only be gained by sickness. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

In each of us there is a little of all of us. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

The excuses we make to ourselves when we want to do something are excellent material for soliloquies, for they are rarely made except when we are alone, and are very often made aloud. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Never trust a man who lays his hand on his heart when he assures you of anything. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The rules of grammar are mere human statutes, which is why when he speaks out of the possessed the Devil himself speaks bad Latin. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Courage, garrulousness and the mob are on our side. What more do we want? — Georg C. Lichtenberg

The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

As soon as you know a man to be blind, you imagine that you can see it from his back. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

How might letters be most efficiently copied so that the blind might read them with their fingers? — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me me. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

We now possess four principles of morality: 1) a philosophical: do good for its own sake, out of respect for the law; 2) a religious: do good because it is God's will, out of love of God; 3) a human: do good because it will promote your happiness, out of self-love; 4) a political: do good because it will promote the welfare of the society of which you are a part, out of love of society having regard to yourself. But is this not all one single principle, only viewed from different sides? — Georg C. Lichtenberg

It is a great shame; most of our words are misused tools / which often still smell of the mud in which previous owners / desecrated them. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Superstition originates among ordinary people in the early and all too zealous instruction they receive in religion: they hear of mysteries, miracles, deeds of the Devil, and consider it very probable that things of this sort could occur in everything anywhere. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Great men too make mistakes, and many among them do it so often that one is almost tempted to call them little men. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

A man is never more serious than when he praise himself. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed ... — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Some people come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede
not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above 14. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

I have remarked very clearly that I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when I am standing up ... — Georg C. Lichtenberg

There is something in our minds like sunshine and the weather, which is not under our control. When I write, the best things come to me from I know not where. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

The fruits of philosophy are the important thing, not the philosophy itself. When we ask the time, we don't want to know how watches are made. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people's attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

What you have been obliged to discover by yourself leaves a path in your mind which you can use again when the need arises. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

It is in most cases more difficult to make intelligent people believe that you are what you are not, than really to become what you would appear to be. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Those who never have time do least — Georg C. Lichtenberg

In the world we live in, one fool makes many fools, but one sage only a few sages. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Bad writers are those who try to express their own feeble ideas in the language of good ones. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

If it were true what in the end would be gained Nothing but another truth. Is this such a mighty advantage We have enough old truths still to digest, and even these we would be quite unable to endure if we did not sometimes flavor them with lies. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Perseverance can lend the appearance of dignity and grandeur to many actions, just as silence in company affords wisdom and apparent intelligence to a stupid person. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

The natural scientists of the previous age knew less than we do and believed they were very close to the goal: we have taken very great steps in its direction and now discover we are still very far away from it. With the most rational philosophers an increase in their knowledge is always attended by an increased conviction of their ignorance. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

I have never yet met anyone who did not think it was an agreeable sensation to cut tinfoil with scissors. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

It requires no especially great talent to write in such a way that another will be very hard put to it to understand what you have written — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Honest unaffected distrust of human abilities under all circumstances is the surest sign of strength of mind. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Honor is infinitely more valuable than positions of honor. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Man is a masterpiece of creation ... — Georg C. Lichtenberg

To live when you do not want to is dreadful, but it would be even more terrible to be immortal when you did not want to be. As things are, however, the whole ghastly burden is suspended from me by a thread which I can cut in two with a penny-knife. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

You believe I run after the strange because I do not know the beautiful; no, it is because you do not know the beautiful that I seek the strange. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

In mathematical analysis we call x the undetermined part of line a: the rest we don't call y, as we do in common life, but a-x. Hence mathematical language has great advantages over the common language. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Why does a suppurating lung give so little warning and a sore on the finger so much? — Georg C. Lichtenberg

There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you can to people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you cannot understand them. — Georg C. Lichtenberg